I need to teach Sachin Tendulkar to play football : Sourav Ganguly

Ganguly cheekily claims Sachin doesn’t know how to play football well

After walking out together for India on innumerable occasions in the past, Indian batting legends Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly will be on opposite sides as owners of different franchises in the newly formed Indian Super League.

“We are now on opposite sides of the sideline,” Ganguly told a television channel ABP Ananda.

Ganguly, alongside industrialists Sanjiv Goenka and Harshvardhan Neotia and merchant backing and financial services expert Utsav Parekh and Spanish football team Atletico Madrid, won the bid for the Kolkata franchise while Tendulkar, along with PVP Ventures bagged the ownership rights of the Kochi franchise.

Ganguly wasted no time in committing the first intentional foul by cheekily quipping that the Mumbaikar first had to learn the basics of football before he could take on the Kolkata team.

Ganguly said: “I have to teach him football. He doesn’t play football that well. The way he puts bat to ball, he doesn’t have that much control over football. Now he has to pick up the nuances of soccer to compete with the Kolkata franchise.”

Ganguly, who was a pretty keen footballer himself in his younger days and also considered taking up the game professionally, also remarked that Tendulkar should take less time to learn football than the 15 years he took to grasp the Bengali language.

“I am not sure whether he will be able to learn soccer fast. I hope he won’t take 15 years to learn soccer. Because after 15 years, Tendulkar may not be seen on the field. So I have to request him to learn the game fast,” Ganguly continued in the same vein.